Keynote Presentation: The On-going Evolution of the Localization Business

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Duration: 36 minutes and 13 seconds

Year: 2009

Country: Thailand

Language: English

License: CC - Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives

Genre: Instructional

Producer: Asia Online

Views: 2,551 (658 embedded)

Posted by: asiaonline on Dec 10, 2009

Localization and Translation Thailand 2009 Day 2 Keynote: The On-going Evolution of the Localization Business - Renato Beninatto, CEO, Milengo Twitter: #LTBKK http://www.localizationandtranslation.com

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Good morning, I hope to wake you up
I hope you did not have too much traffic coming in
The topic on my presentation today is evolution in the translation business
I love the word evolution because it indicates movement, progress
And I think that in the translation and localization industry we are living in very interesting times.
I would like to start with a quote from
two authors who talk about futurism and forecasting.
And one of the great things about this quote is that
when you are talking vision, about the future
it is very easy to make mistakes
If your vision is good and you have
a good picture of the future
You probably are just describing the present
so a lot of the things that I said and I say when I talk about the evolution of the industry
I have been very glad to see them happening in the last few weeks
This is how fast things are changing
So if I go and say things that seem to be fantastic and impossible
I am probably wrong but thats ok
I can live with that
But lets talk a little about evolution and innovation
I am fascinated by the topic of innovation, how things change
in the world, not only in the translation industry
I have been doing a lot of reading and research about this topic
One of the things that I found out is that
in markets that are very competitive
Yesterday Mike Anobile presented some data from the industry
some of the data from the industry that I have seen suggests that are probably 5,000 LSPs
translation companies around the world
so its a very competitive, very dynamic market
a market with low barriers to entry, anybody can start a translation company quite easily
so in markets that are very competitive like this
people don't like to, uhh, embrace change very easily
they love the way things are and are very comfortable with the status quo
and they feel safe in the way they do business and the things that they do
so what has happened in the translation industry essentially
for the last 25 years is very little change
Things are done the same way over and over again
I am a frequent participant to industry conferences
and its fascinating how often I hear the same things over and over again
and I must say that you in this audience are very lucky
because I probably attended some 20 conferences
in the last 12 months and
this is the first time that I have seen something really different
something new, some good interesting technology conversations going on
and breakthrough happening
you are among the lucky few who are seeing something really different
because most of the time when you go to industry conferences all you really hear about is quality
uhh quality, uhh quality
and sometimes standards
and then if you are in Europe you will hear about the EN15038 standard
which is a fantastic standard
that tells you how do translations the way they were done in 1950
and then you go to Canada and they are having the same conversations
talking about establishing standards the same way that they do in Europe
so they are going to copy the European standard
add some more bureacracy
and then you are going to have translations the way you did in in 1949!
and we heard yesterday from our colleagues from the TAC (I don't see them here) in China
and China wants to imitate exactly the same thing
yesterday he told us that they have published 3 translation standards
standards for/in services, I am not talking about technology
in software standards are very good, they allow for interoperability, they allow communication
they allow people to build on common platforms
but in the services industry standards are a waste of effort
it's trying to make people, everybody do the things the same way
and this is not very helpful for our industry because
it freezes the way things are done
and everybody feels safe because everybody knows what is going to happen
everybody knows how things are going to be done
but we suffer from several problems because of that and I am going to share
with you what are some of these issues
One of the things I have identified, and yesterday I confirmed it
Age and bad habits really affect the translation industry
and when I talk about age, I think that people who leading and driving the conversation in the translation industry
are old and there I include myself
How many of you here were born after 1984?
1, 2, 3, 4 ... right ... OK you can lie, ladies can lie
not too many, so 1984, 25 years old
These people who were born after 1984
were born with the internet, they didn't use typewriters
they did not use Wordperfect
They didn't use, they don't know what Ventura Publisher is
They don't know what a 3½ floppy disk is
Why? Because they are the new generation
The leadership in our industry
thinks; these are common statements I hear every time
I talk about innovation in translation: It's always been done like that
It works! I don't have time to change
my processes because I am too busy
I'm losing business, I'm doing stupid things
making a lot of mistakes but I don't have time to correct them because I am too busy
Oh I heard this last week from a large software company in Silicon Valley
I invested $250,000 in SDL TMS
I can't change my processes now
OK, you're throwing away money, but that's your problem
The other part is skepticism
machine translation will take so long to catch up that it is never going to work
This sentence about MT, I heard it for the first time 25 years ago
MT is between 4 and 400 years from perfection
Well until 5 years ago, 3 years ago, I would have said we are closer to 400 years
Now I would say that we are closer to 4
and actually I would say we are closer to 2 than to 4
People are too busy being busy, and they are not really thinking about the changes going around them
The way that translation has been done forever
and some of you might have heard of the Septuagint
which the way the Bible was translated into Latin
it was translated by 70 translators
and the Pope decided, where there was agreement, that would be the standard
and was the first model of crowdsourcing I guess
but anyway the way we have been doing translation is the same way we have been doing it for hundreds of years
It is following the publishing, the printing model
somebody does the translation, somebody reviews the translation, another set of eyes reviews the translation
and what is the process?
the process is all about catching errors
I am going to read this material because there must be a mistake here to find
How many of you have ever reviewed a translation?
Both of you, right?
How many of you have reviewed a translation and sent it back with no correction?
I don't believe you ..(laughs).. it was your translation
very small ..... one paragraph...
anyway human nature is, especially in translation, which is something that is subjective
forces us to want to change things
They say that the biggest drive in human nature is not love, not hate
it is the uncontrollable urge to change somebody else's text
right? if you have a red pen in your hand you will change text
its human nature, fortunately we don't do anything with the red pens anymore
so you can let some things go
The problem with catching errors is that
there is an imbalance, sometimes the reviewer has not the same set of information
or less information than the translator
so the reviewer is actually adding mistakes to the translation
The reviewer goes there and says I don't like six, lets put half a dozen
well same thing, BUT the glossary says six not half a dozen
and then you suddenly incorporate a mistake into the system
The other problem is that we in the translation industry follow
a sequential process, so somebody will translate, somebody else is going to review
somebody else is going to proof it
and very often there is no communication between the parties
You will say OK small project, 10 pages, 50 pages, people will communicate
but when you are talking in a project where we have 50 translators
and 12 reviewers
there is very little communication between the translator and the reviewer
so teamwork is not a natural part of the process
and I call this the blind leading the ignorant
nobody knows what they are doing and everybody prays that somebody else is going to catch
the mistake, if you are not sure of the translation, the reviewer will find it
the reviewer will catch my error
so what we need to do now is move to a new paradigm
the technology as Dirk showed us yesterday in his presentation
allows for collaboration, allows for input from multiple parties into the process
so we are in a period in technology and development where multiple people can work together
and they can do it right the first time
we heard in several presentations yesterday that when multiple people work on a project
mistakes are caught naturally, because of re-use
because of cross referencing and because of the editing process
that goes on as the translation is being done
So what has prevented the implementation of innovation in the translation industry?
There are three dogmas - a dogma is a Catholic church term - it is something that you don't discuss
you don't disagree, it doesn't 'matter
so in the Church they will say: God Exists
nobody can challenge that, it's a dogma, right?
And we have dogmas, we have these topics that nobody can discuss
in the translation industry because everybody agrees on them
and they have been the main reason that innovation has been hard to happen in the translation industry
the #1 dogma has to do with translation memory
What I liked about our conversations yesterday is that nobody talked about translation memory
every once in a while there was a question when Phillipp was making his presentation
we did not touch the subject and the whole industry has heard the story
invented by Trados by the way, a very smart marketing ploy
that translation memories are assets
That they have economic value
I contend that translation memory has zero value
For me a translation memory is the same thing as a dictionary
a dictionary - the value of the dictionary is the $50 that you paid for the book
or the access to the website
the content is free
what costs money is the package, right?
translation memories are not an asset from the economic point of view
if they were an asset they would be depreciated and they would be amortized
Do you do that at Adobe, Dirk?
You don't think so, right? you don't know how much
in your books you have - I know, its a dogma, I see the smirks
I am challenging a dogma
My contention, go ahead Michael ......
translation memory will generate savings
it will be an investment but they are not an asset
It's like a coupon - when you go the pharmacy with a coupon and you get
a 25% discount on your drugs or your shaving cream
cause you have a coupon - that's what translation memory is
a coupon - its an opportunity for you to save money in the future
You may save it or you may not
It might be a good deal, it might not
I go to a pharmacy in Boston where I live and I
every time I buy something I get coupons
and I always get coupons for discounts for diapers
cause I used to buy diapers
four years ago when my son was a baby
I don't buy them anymore, he is four years old, he doesn't
wear diapers, but I still get 25% discount on diapers, thats like translation memory
its the same thing. Sometimes it has absolutely no value, OK?
The 2nd dogma that has prevented change and innovation in the industry is
the concept that more eyes improve quality
The more you review, the better the quality
and that seems .. natural .. makes sense right?
so I write a text and I ask two people to read it
Yes if the people that are reading it and reviewing are qualified
to add value
The reality is that it has become a process
People only get reviews because you are supposed to have reviews
Its part of the workflow
Somebody translates, somebody reviews
check, check, check
There's no real value added in this process
There is just a check mark done there because we assume
that other people reviewing will improve the process
If I did a good job selecting the right translator
I don't need a reviewer
A reviewer will only add noise
add impurities to my translation process
So I don't say the process is bad
But the process for the sake of the process is not valuable
So it is a dogma
We don't need three reviews to make a better translation
As I said before
The 3rd dogma has to do with consistency, right?
I had asked this question countless times
What is better? To have 2 translators to do the job in 10 days?
Or 10 translators to do a job in 2 days
Everybody will say it is better to have 2 translators to do the job in 10 days
My answer would actually be, If you have 10 days
I use 10 translators and do the job in four days
I use two days for preparation
I'll use two days for cleaning up and organizing the project
The reality is that, .. in my experience in the translation industry
as a translator, as a business owner,
as a project manager
as an analyst
What I have seen is when you talk about quality
you are usually talking about 15 variables, depending on the language
90% of the errors that you find in translations
have to do with style
and style has to do with capitalization
with spelling, with choice of verb tense
form of address
informal / formal right?
language style
These variables are things that you don't standardize after the fact
Style is something that you standardize upfront
Style is something that you agree
in the beginning. It is much easier to get 10
different translators on a phone call and agree with them
we are going to translate the gerunds like this
all the numbers will be converted to the metric system
with 2 decimal points
We are going to use capital letters in all the words in the titles or not
Whatever you agree, we are going to capitalize after a colon
or anything, you can agree on those issues upfront
90% of the mistakes that exist in the translation processes can be avoided
by preparation and agreeing with the things upfront
By the way, I have a blog and I invite you to read it after the event naturally
My last entry is about the latest book by Dan Brown (of the DaVinci Code)
He wrote a book that was launched in the US on September 15th
and was launched in Sweden on October 21st
36 days after ... it is a 502 page book
36 days after it was launched in the US, it was launched in Sweden in Swedish
7 translators worked on the project
and if you talk to anybody, if you want to translate literature
You have to have a translator that understands the style of the author
and you have to have consistency in the tranlsation
What these people did is, they said that Harry Potter
lost a 150,000 copies in sales
in Sweden because it took them six months to translate the book
So the Swedes were buying the book in English
instead of buying it in Swedish
so with the Dan Brown book which was supposed to have been a big best-seller
they said we are not going to lose money
we are going to launch it as fast as possible
and they used this approach, they used more translators
to work on the project, they coordinated
and everything else, but
the driver here was not the quality of the translation and by the way
if you have seen my blog, I refer people to a story
that was published in a Swedish publication
and the Swedish author says
unfortunately, or sadly is the word she uses, "sadly the translation is quite good"
and she said sadly because she would rather have
bad translation that she could criticize and say that the process did not work
But again this for me was a clear proof that
you can have good quality, consistent quality
consistent translations, regardless of the number of translators that are working on the project
If you do a good setup, a good preparation phase
So why is it important to talk about
innovation and change
and changing the processes and defying the dogmas
Because we are in an environment
where automation has to be
a requirement
We cannot continue to doing translation the way we have been doing
and expect that everything that needs to be translated will get done
into all the languages that need to be translated
and the reasons are very clear
the number of translators is limited
it takes a long time to develop a good translator
it would take you 3-5 years to have decent translator working
while I could double the amount of content in a year
or less actually, somebody mentioned yesterday quadrupling the volume
I forget the context but
I could essentially say that tomorrow I am going to localize all the Adobe products into Burmese
Are there enough translators to do Burmese?
Are there enough people who can do Burmese?
And all of a sudden I have a concept that has never been translated before
or that never existed that needs to be translated
so formation takes time, translators are scarce
and the demographics run against us
Most rich European economies have declining populations
They say that even India and China, in the next 40 years are going to have
stable populations
The global population is expected to reach a standard stable level in 40 years
So the population is aging, people don't make babies anymore in Scandinavia and Italy
The Netherlands, I think that France is the only EU country to have positive growth
Probably because of the Algerians, the Moroccans and the other ones who are there
There is another limitation that we have
You cannot buy Norwegian in Uganda, as they say
Maybe there is one translator, a Norwegian who lives in Uganda and can do translations but
The market is driven by the country that speaks that language
Norway is a very rich country
Nobody wants to be a translator in Norway
Actually nobody wants to work in Norway
But that's another story
They're recording this right? they are going to show this in Norway
I think I am going to be banned from Norway
So this is the natural environment - you can see from this curve here
You have an explosive growth in volume
You have price that is pretty much standard or slowly declining
for the last twenty years
the number of translators is going down
So you need to improve productivity, that is the only way that you are going to address the demand for content
So we have the perfect environment for automation
Add to to that the fact that I think that translation is like toilet paper
Its very cheap and it's only important when it is not there
Nobody thinks about toilet paper until it's not there
Nobody thinks about translation until it's absent
You never see a positive translation story in the news
The only time that translation will make the news is when something goes wrong
That is the only time that translation will go to the CEO of the company
The last time I saw news about translation related to a large company it had to do
with Google in China, where they had failed in their translation efforts
and it went all the way up to the founders and the CEO and they had to go all the way to China
and address issues that had to do with Localization
The conversation I heard here yesterday and I hear over and over again is
How are we going to make translation a strategic issue?
How are we going to make strategic discussion.
We are going to make it a board level issue the day they start discussing toilet paper
So what happens in an environment like this is that everybody is comfortable
Like I said before, this is the way have done business, until disruption happens
And disruption always comes from the outside
Disruption comes from the guys who are not thinking the same way that we are thinking
They did not go to translation school, they did not work at an LSP
They never used software in their lives
They don't know what Trados is
They probably call it tray-does or something like that
Here are some examples of disruptors who are coming from the outside
Facebook -good example - they had their website translated professionally
into Spanish in about 3 months
Then they created a tool that let people translate and they had their website translated into French
in 48 hours
We are talking about 300,000 words or something like that
48 hours and the volunteers translated Facebook
I participated just to test the tool
to the Portuguese translation of Facebook
I did 47 sentences, 430 words
And I had a 198 votes for my translations
And with this little amount I am today
35th most frequent translator of Facebook
But if I go up I will have guys who have translated tens of thousands of words
What did I get in return? My picture on Facebook
You can go there and see me on the Leaderboard
Another player coming completely from the outside, our host here, Asia Online
This guy never did translation before, he can't even speak another language
He is a monolingual translator as we heard yesterday
So the thing is that somebody who looks at the translation problem as a technology problem
rather than a language problem. He is not interested in subjects and ..
verbs and inverse order, direct order
as a style issue and a linguistic issue
He is interested in this as a technology problem, as a database problem
How do I solve this from a technology point of view
And of course Google, the big disruptor
The company that goes in and wherever they go they change the rules
And they came out with this Goggle Translator Toolkit which is very basic
It is not enterprise level, it is not something that can be used for business
It is not at the same level as Asia Online
but its free, its there, anybody can use it
its there today and these are people that are not in the language industry at all
They don't care about the language industry
The reason why this is important is that Google has unlimited funds
and this is a pet project for the founders of the company
who just happen to be Russian and French, right?
and so they understand the language issue
The program manager of GTT has weekly meetings with the CEO and the founders of Google
Not everybody has that, this is a key project for them
So just as we don't use typewriters anymore, we won't be using Trados in the future
Yes Trados is dead
This is a picture from Don Shin a vendor in LA showed at a presentation, that I borrowed from him
Yesterday I saw a demo of Asia Online, it is very close to what we have here
So it is essentially a desktop for a translator
You have WYSIWYG, you have glossary, you local memory, server memory
You have machine memory and chat with team members
so you can collaborate and finally this is a cute thing a calculator
How much money am I making as I work?
Isn't that cool? Can you imagine that?
I made $5 and I did not even work 3 minutes
Just as we did not use Google 5 years ago, today my daughter asks a question I don't know - she says Google it
It is going to be the same thing with Google translate
The discussions that we are having these days are moot
We are having these discussions because we are in a transition period
In a few years maybe months, all of this will be old history
and new generations will come with different ideas and different expectations
So to conclude I make a few predictions here
I am being optimistic (or pessimistic) By 2015 TM tools will be free or irrelevant
I don't think we will be talking about TM anymore after the next 5 years
Most large translation projects will be collaborative in nature
as they are today but more, technology makes it so easy
This I find funny, I wrote this two months ago, translator productivity will be measured in tens of thousands of words/day
instead of 2,500 or 3000 words that we expect today
The funny thing is that there was an email sent by SDL last week
where Marian Greenfield of ATA said that she did 34,500 words in 10 hours
Just by using the features of her Trados whatever
Like I said in the beginning, its going to happen in the future, but its already happening today
I see a change in the landscape in this industry
Companies that get it will grow like Asia Online, Google, Lionbridge, Lingotek, Sajan and Elanex
I think that the biggest loser is going to be SDL cause they resist innovation, they resist change
It is so easy to stay the way they are. They want Trados to be faster
Trados to be better, Trados to be the standard
Or SDLX or whatever product they have
They only sow confusion - they have 19 products, some of which don't talk to each other
and they have VERY BAD customer service
You can't compete with free Goggle Translate
or you cant compete with excellent service and excellent quality
and evolved process like Asia Online when all you do is provide client-server technology
So this is my presentation for today and this is my contact information
And I see a sign the time is up

Keynote Presentation: The On-going Evolution of the Localization Business

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